Arturo Arias (engineer)

Arturo Arias Suárez (Nueva Imperial, August 10, 1923 – Santiago, March 12, 2001) was a Chilean engineer and scientist, known for his contributions in the fields of soil mechanics, earthquake engineering and seismology.

Arturo Arias
Born	(1923-08-10)August 10, 1923 Nueva Imperial, Chile
Died	March 12, 2001(2001-03-12) (aged 77) Santiago, Chile
Alma mater	University of Chile
Known for	Arias Intensity
Scientific career
Fields	Seismology, earthquake engineering, soil mechanics
Institutions	University of Chile Massachusetts Institute of Technology Engineering Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Career

He graduated as a civil engineer from the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile in 1948, after publishing his memory of the title called "Oscilations of a high pond". For years he worked as a professor and researcher, starting in 1946 as an assistant in vector calculus and rational mechanics courses.^[1]

In 1952 he proposed theoretical bases to apply the general theory of vibrations in the anti-seismic structural engineering, for structures with various degrees of freedom.^[2]

In 1954 Arias became the director of Chile's first nuclear physics laboratory, built around a Cockroft-Walton multiplier, an accelerator for ionized particles.^[3]

In 1959, he was one of the founders of the Institute of Mathematics and Physics, which was the progenitor of the current Physics Department of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. There he was an academic for more than 50 years. In addition, he was director of the Institute for Research and Testing of Materials (IDIEM) between 1958 and 1965, a period in which he developed metal laboratories and industrial radiography. He promoted the magazine created by IDIEM through which various scientific publications were made that earned him recognition by Unesco.^[1]

He was recognized in the field of seismology for conceiving Instrumental Seismic Intensity, also called Arias Intensity (IA), first released in 1970 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.^[4][5] Its main contribution is considered "the most reliable instrumental measure used to date" and "used as a reference parameter" for anti-seismic engineering.^[6][7] This parameter was the result of improving an earlier intensity proposed in 1952 by George Housner, by applying Parseval's theorem to it.^[8] The mathematical formula for Arias Intensity is:

${\displaystyle I_{A}={\frac {\pi }{2g}}\int _{0}^{T_{d}}a(t)^{2}dt}$ (m/s)

Following his investigations, the anti-seismic safety standards in Chile NCH433 Of.72 were established in 1972, successfully tested during the Santiago earthquake of 1985. And, subsequently, the standard NCH433 Of.96 were established in 1996.^[9]

Arias worked as a visiting professor at MIT in 1969, where he taught earthquake engineering. After the 1973 military coup, for "involuntary reasons"^[8] he emigrated from Chile to Mexico for some years. There he taught and researched at the Engineering Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico between 1976 and 1983. After that, in the 1980s, he returned to University of Chile. Since then he lived periods in both countries, to finally die in Chile in 2003.^[10]

Awards and honours

• 1967: Ramón Salas Edwards Award, for his contributions in science and technology.
• 1984: José A. Cuevas Prize, distinguished by the College of Civil Engineers of Mexico.
• 1993: Full member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences.
• 1999: Raúl Devés Jullian Award, for his contributions to engineering education.
• 2000: Distinguished as Professor Emeritus by the University of Chile.
• 2009: BBC chose him as one of the five Latin Americans who changed the world.^[11]

References

1. Cid, Daniela (2010). Arturo Arias Suárez: Intensidad a toda prueba. Revista FCFM (Santiago: Facultad de Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas de la Universidad de Chile) (47): 40–43. ISSN 0716-3088 (in spanish)
2. Arias, A. (June 1952). Bases teóricas del cálculo anti-sísmico de estructuras de varios grados de libertad. In Anales del Instituto de Ingenieros de Chile (No. 7-8, pp. ág-192) (in spanish).
3. Gutiérrez, Claudio, Gutiérrez, Flavio, & Labarca, Cristina. (2006). Physics: trajectory in Chile. Historia (Santiago), 2(se) Retrieved July 8, 2020.
4. Arias, Arturo (1970), A measure of earthquake intensity, Proa, of the Conf. on Seismic Design of Nuclear Power Plants, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. pp. 438–483.
5. Jia, Junbo (2016). Modern Earthquake Engineering: Offshore and Land-based Structures. New York: Springer. p. 848. ISBN 978-3642318542.
6. "7. Seismic landslide hazard zonation". Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente. September 2, 2006. Archived from the original on August 15, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
7. Rodríguez, Margarita (2009).El aporte chileno a la sismología. BBC (in spanish).
8. Presentación Profesor Emerito de la Universidad de Chile Prof. Ing. Arturo Arias Suárez Oficio 570, sept. 2000, Universidad de Chile (in spanish)
9. FCFM Universidad de Chile (1999). Boletín Informativo: Arturo Arias Suárez: Premio "Raúl Devés Jullian". (in spanish)
10. Sesma, F. S. (2016). Arturo Arias Suárez en México. Gaceta Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM, 1(57), 3–5. (in spanish)
11. BBC (2009). Latinoamericanos que cambiaron el mundo. (in spanish).